RUS­SIA’S NOT SO SE­CRET WEAPON . . . FAKE NEWS

THE Rus­sian Em­bassy in Lon­don last night dis­puted the suc­cess of West­ern air strikes, claim­ing that ‘of the 103 cruise mis­siles launched by the US and its al­lies, 71 were in­ter­cepted by Syria’s air de­fences, us­ing mostly Soviet-made sys­tems’.

Here, are other ex­am­ples of ‘fake news’ pumped out by the Krem­lin:

BRI­TAIN HELPED FAKE THE DOUMA ATTACK

The Krem­lin claimed that Bri­tain or­dered the vol­un­teer aid or­gan­i­sa­tion, the White Hel­mets, to ‘stage’ the chem­i­cal weapons attack in Douma. The UK am­bas­sador to the UN, Karen Pierce, branded the claims ‘grotesque’.

THE UK POI­SONED SERGEI SKRI­PAL

Rus­sia sug­gested Bri­tain poi­soned former spy Sergei Skri­pal to de­flect at­ten­tion from Brexit. Rus­sian for­eign min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov said: ‘It could be ben­e­fi­cial to the Bri­tish gov­ern­ment, which has found it­self in an un­com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion, un­able to ful­fil prom­ises they made about Brexit.’

BRI­TAIN AB­DUCTED THE SKRI­PALS

The Krem­lin also ac­cused Bri­tain of the ‘ab­duc­tion’ of Mr Skri­pal and his daugh­ter Yu­lia af­ter she was qui­etly re­leased from hos­pi­tal last week. In fact, Yu­lia, 33, said she had re­fused help from the Rus­sian em­bassy.

TOURISTS WARNED ABOUT BRI­TISH SPIES

Rus­sia has is­sued warn­ings to tourists trav­el­ling to the UK that Bri­tish agents may plant ‘for­eign ob­jects’ in their lug­gage. Its em­bassy told vis­i­tors: ‘Given the Rus­so­pho­bia in Bri­tish so­ci­ety ar­ti­fi­cially im­posed by the au­thor­i­ties, it is nec­es­sary to avoid con­flict sit­u­a­tions with the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.’ A Bri­tish gov­ern­ment source said: ‘We’re frankly as­ton­ished – it is pure fake news.’

THE QUEEN IS A DRINKER

Alek­sey Pushkov, a Rus­sian se­na­tor and ally of Vladimir Putin, sug­gested Queen El­iz­a­beth is a heavy drinker. Bri­tish con­ser­va­tive MP Bernard Jenkin said the com­ments were de­signed to dis­tract from Rus­sia’s re­spon­si­bil­ity for the poi­son­ing of the Skri­pals.